thaxting

When I first saw reference to thaxting, I wondered what on earth it could be.

This was last week, when I looked at a piece of sheet music. Owen Duggan, the skilled and happening director of music at Christ Episcopal — and award-winning singer-songwriter of children's music — has a show choir at San Antonio College, not having much else to do with his spare time. He asked me to do an a cappella version of the school's alma mater.

At this point, you may be wondering when I'm going to tell you how to thaxt (assuming you'd want to). Well, I'll tell you, but first, the alma mater. Now, when you're doing a college alma mater, you often use a familiar melody. Baylor uses "In the Good Old Summertime." UT uses "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad." What catchy folk tune does SAC use? Why, it's "Jupiter," from Gustav Holst's The Planets.

As I looked it over, I thought, hey, this is pretty neat. It was transformed from a heavy symphonic jovian romp (as a bassist in the orchestra, I always shouted "Hoooooh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hohhhhhhhh!" when we played it. Holst being Holst, I wasn't heard) into a solemn hymn with some interesting turns, the kind of thing we associate with Elgar and Vaughan Williams and back numbers in the Episcopal hymnbook. One doesn't immediately jump to the thought that jazz choir is the perfect setting for it, but I trusted Owen's vision and got to work, and sure enough the whole thing turned out to be a really cool arrangement. Can't wait to hear them do it.

Now where were we. Ah yes. On the sheet music, the lyrics are credited to someone I assume was a professor. Standard-issue hail-to-thee stuff for a school song. But what does it say for the composer credit? "Adapted from Holst?" "A rejiggered tune by Holst?" Nope, it just says "Gustav Holst," and under that it says:

Thaxted from "The Planets: Jupiter"

Hm. These trendy academics: what is it exactly to thaxt something? Does it refer to slightly changing something to fit a different purpose? Or would that be covered by "adapt?"

Wouldn't you like to know. Actually, if I keep putting off the revelation, you'll just look it up yourself, in which case you'll find what I found. "Thaxted" is the name of a hymn tune. The melodies of hymns often have separate names that aren't the title of the hymn itself. "Amazing Grace" isn't "Amazing Grace;" it's "New Britain." That's because hymns and melodies are often shuffled around, and it's good for the melody to have a separate identity.

Holst indeed adapted his theme from The Planets himself to fit the lyrics to "I Vow to Thee, My Country," and called the hymn tune "Thaxted," after the English town where he lived. (If the place-name were spelled more like other English place-names, it might have been "Thackstead," and I wouldn't have been as thrown-off. But then I started thinking of other names like "Brixton." Hm. Same orthographic process, probably pretty early in the game.)

So. It turns out that "thaxt" isn't a verb. Or at least wasn't until this weekend. I've made it one.

thaxt |thakst| v to omit quotation marks in such a way as to create a new, perhaps unintelligible, meaning.
n an example of that misuse.
Ex. With No Way Out, Kevin Costner began a streak of good acting. Revenge is the end.

There you have it, folks. A new name for an old phenomenon that might not have had a name. Thaxting.